i LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



The Deeper Meanings 



FREDERIC A. HINCKLEY 



NOV 241894 



BOSTON 

GEO. H. ELLIS, 141 FRANKLIN STREET 
1894 




GEO. H. ELLIS, PRINTER, 141 FRANKLIN ST., BOSTON. 



To 



the one for fifty years a gentle minister of 
good to men, 
other a heart all devotion to husband and children, 
a life in which sunshine conquered 
every cloud 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

The Cost of the Divine Spark ... 9 

The Poet-Vision ...» 29 

Looking at Life through New Eyes . 49 
Rejoice : We Conquer ! ...... 73 



The Cost of the Divine Spark. 



THE COST OF THE DIVINE 
SPARK. 



This verse in Browning's poem of "Rabbi 
Ben Ezra " furnishes me my text to-day : — 

" Rejoice we are allied 
To that which doth provide 
And not partake, effect and not receive 1 
A spark disturbs our clod ; 
Nearer we hold of God 
Who gives than of his tribes that take, 
I must believe." 

A spark disturbs our clod, — that is what is 
the matter with us, and that is the glory of us. 
The stones are not troubled by philosophy, 
the flowers are not troubled by philosophy, per- 
haps it is safe to say that the members of the 
animal creation below man are not troubled by 
philosophy. No big interrogation-point is con- 
stantly staring them in the face. They exist, 
they grow, they fulfil their functions in instinc- 



10 THE DEEPER MEANINGS. 

tive conformity to laws about which they know 
nothing and care nothing. You cannot imagine 
the grains in a piece of sandstone discussing 
gravitation and cohesion and adhesion. You 
cannot imagine chrysanthemums differing with 
each other on the theory of color. You cannot 
imagine cattle discoursing eloquently upon the 
evolution of the vertebral column. Man alone 
seems gifted with the power of participation in 
the creative work of the universe. He wants to 
know. His thought dives to the depths of the 
sea and the centre of the earth, investigates the 
things which without the microscope are invisi- 
ble, and goes off into space among the stars. 
The creative impulse is his, the divine spark is 
his, — his in a sense that can be applied to no 
other order of existence. 

What a wonderful and beautiful thing the ex- 
ternal world is ! I rode the other afternoon, in a 
rain, the clouds hanging low in every direction, 
through a largely unsettled and in no small de- 
gree uncultivated part of our city ; and even then 
and there I saw a richness and variety of color 
which I should strive in vain to describe. I saw 
harmonies of effect which must be seen to be 
understood. I saw how in the woods and in the 



THE COST OF THE DIVINE SPARK. II 

swamp, in the valley and on the hill, under the 
darkening veil of mist as well as under the clear 
blue sky, " Beauty is its own excuse for being." 
I have seen, as we have all seen, the fields rich 
with blossoms, and been charmed, as we have 
all been charmed, by the fragrance of the pine. 
I have met the first arbutus, and exchanged 
greetings with the last aster ; and I have said to 
both in thought, "The selfsame power that 
brought me here brought you." I have wit- 
nessed, as some of you have witnessed, trained 
horses and dogs. I have been brought, as some 
of you have been brought, to feel very near the 
beasts of the field and the fowls of the air. 
" The spacious firmament on high " with all it 
covers has spoken to me, as it has to you. It 
all fills us with wonder and awe. Spite of every- 
thing to the contrary, we come back at last to the 
poet's conclusion : — 

" O world as God has made it, all is beauty; 
And knowing this is love, and love is duty, 
What further may be asked for or declared ? " 

But there is something more than the mere ex- 
ternal beauty: there is the eye which sees it. 
There is something more than the firmament of 



12 



THE DEEPER MEANINGS. 



suns and stars : there is the mind that compre- 
hends them. There is something more than the 
noblest animal instincts : there is the heart which 
is touched by them. There is something more 
than the onward push of matter in passive obe- 
dience to universal laws : there is the soul which 
aspires and longs and worships, through un- 
known orbits and by immeasurable propulsions. 

"What a piece of work is a man ! How noble 
in reason ! how infinite in faculties ! in form and 
moving, how express and admirable ! in action, 
how like an angel ! in apprehension, how like a 
god ! " It is because he has so much of the 
Divine in him, it is because " A spark disturbs 
his clod," that he has the eye to see, the mind 
to think, the heart to feel, the soul to aspire. 

And these are not a free gift. They bring 
duties, they impose conditions, they cost some- 
thing. 

What is the cost of the divine spark within 
us ? 

Most unquestionably, a great deal of struggle 
and a great deal of suffering. Stones do not 
struggle, they do not suffer, trees do not strug- 
gle and suffer, the brute creation does not strug- 
gle and suffer, with any such intensity as we do. 



THE COST OF THE DIVINE SPARK. 13 

Struggle is the supreme life of man : suffering is 
the certain lot of man. Why ? 

1 st. Because of a gentle sensibility. A 
human being is a sensitive plant. Touch him 
anywhere, he feels it. His flesh feels it; his 
mind feels it ; his heart feels it ; his soul feels 
it. Physiologists tell us that these bodies of 
ours are provided all over their surface with 
little organs of sensation, called sensory nerves, 
and how by means of these nerves we receive 
all our impressions of feeling, taste, fragrance, 
sound, sight. But the truth does not end with 
the body. There is a sensitiveness of the mind, 
quick to respond to the appeal of thought ; there 
is a sensitiveness of the heart, quick to respond 
to the appeal of love ; there is a sensitiveness 
of the soul, quick to respond to the appeal of 
the ideal and the God-like. We are easily hurt 
and bruised all over and all through. We are 
easily stirred by noble impulses all over and all 
through. Did you ever think of it, good friend, 
that the ability to enjoy keenly is necessarily 
identical with the ability to sorrow keenly? 
You know we see a person occasionally who 
seems callous to misfortune aud suffering. We 
say trouble rolls off him like water off a duck's 



14 



THE DEEPER MEANINGS. 



back. I am suspicious it is largely in the seem- 
ing. But, if there are mere surface people, de- 
pend upon it it is superficiality all round. If 
there is no deep grief, neither is there any deep 

joy- 
Certainty and uncertainty march hand in 
hand. Good and bad fortune, as we call them, 
march hand in hand. Wealth and poverty, 
health and sickness, life and death, march hand 
in hand. 

" Were all things certain, nothing would be sure; 
Joy would be joyless, of misfortune free; 
Were we all wealthy, then we all were poor ; 
And, death not being, life would cease to be." 

The more delicate our sensibilities, the more 
we realize that. Sometimes our senses lose 
somewhat of their keenness of appreciation. We 
become more or less obtuse, and then it seems 
to us as if we had deteriorated a little in the 
quality of our manhood and womanhood. Ah ! 
we would not, for all the world, exchange this 
quality in that divine person who comes into our 
presence like a benediction straight from heaven. 
And why? Because the chords of its life re- 
spond so quickly and rhythmically to every 



THE COST OF THE DIVINE SPARK. 15 

heart-beat of joy and to every heart-beat of sor- 
row. The furrows that come upon such a brow 
are deeper and more numerous because it feels 
in its own heart its own and others' experiences 
so deeply, but they are the sure indications of 
the divine spark. They are the not too dear 
price to pay for that gentle sensitiveness which, 
if it makes struggle harder and suffering more 
intense, is also the divine pledge of correspond- 
ing attainment and joy. 

2d. Struggle and suffering come because we 
are beings of tender sympathy. And who with 
any semblance of wisdom could understand, or 
who with any touch of feeling could endure, a 
world without that ? Dickens, in the character 
of Scrooge, — fictitious in degree, let us hope, — 
has painted for us that hardness of heart which 
never allows itself to stand in another's place 
and feel for another's ills. Dwelling in a world 
of facts, as it thinks, — hard, inexorable facts, 
— it has no side for sentiment. It can be 
surrounded by the spectacle of trouble, and see 
none of it ; it can be in the very midst of the 
low, sad music of humanity, and hear none of 
it. Well, how do we think of such a man ? 
Of all others, he it is who is without God in 



THE DEEPER MEANINGS. 



the world. He has almost succeeded in quench- 
ing the divine spark, in making himself like 
the inanimate stone upon the mountain-side, so 
much has he lost of that incarnation of God 
which, in the highest sense, constitutes the man. 
But Tiny Tim, the little fellow who had always 
known pain and suffering and deprivation, with 
his little heart overflowing in such love as could 
bless and sanctify any home, — how we feel in his 
presence a superiority which lifts towards the 
sky, how sure we are that, out of such experi- 
ences as his, some good is born and some gentler 
nature comes ! Why, if we could take all of that 
out of the world, the best pages of its history 
would be wanting; and no one could feel in 
time to come, as so many have felt in times past, 
that in the smiles of the near and the dear 
comes to us an infinite message, and that un- 
derneath us, in the care of the near and dear, are 
the everlasting arms. But it costs heart-ache ; it 
costs sometimes all that makes life buoyant and 
much that makes it beautiful. It helps to make 
every misfortune heavier, every parting more in- 
expressibly hard to bear ; and yet we would not 
have it otherwise. We respect ourselves more 
for every genuine tear and for the heaviness of 



THE COST OF THE DIVINE SPARK. 1 7 

burden which comes with every sorrow. We all 
like to be strong and independent. We all like 
at times to feel sufficient unto ourselves. But 
we are not strong and independent. We are not 
self-sufficient. No amount of wealth, no amount 
of power over others, ever yet made up for the 
absence of human sympathy. The halo around 
every sainted memory speaks of it. The inspi- 
ration of every ennobling relation speaks of it. 
And we know, friends, do we not, instinctively, 
that the quick, appreciative response to another's 
mood, another's longing, another's reaching out 
for help, is a God-like thing. It may not be a 
quality which pays large dividends in hard cash, 
but it stays and uplifts and divinizes after all the 
dividends have vanished. I like so much those 
old lines, so simple in expression, so sublime in 
meaning : — 

" Nay, speak no ill : a kindly word 

Can never leave a sting behind ; 
And, oh, to breathe each tale we've heard 

Is far beneath a noble mind ! 
Full oft a better seed is sown 

By choosing thus a kinder plan ; 
For, if but little good is known, 

Still let us speak the best we can. 



i8 



THE DEEPEK MEANINGS. 



" Give us the heart that fain would hide, 

Would fain another's faults efface. 
How can it please e'en human pride 

To prove humanity so base ? 
No, let us reach a nobler mould, 

A nobler sentiment of man. 
Be earnest in the search of good, 

And speak of all the best we can. 

" Then speak no ill, but lenient be 

To others' failings as our own. 
If you're the first the fault to see, 

Be not the first to make it known. 
For life is but a passing day, 

No lip can tell how brief its span. 
Then, oh, the little time we stay, 

Let's speak of all the best we can ! " 

Do you suppose a stone wrote those words ? 
Do you suppose even a rose or a tree or a horse 
or a dog wrote them ? It was the divine spark 
of tender sympathy in a human being that 
prompted them, and burns steadily through 
them. And so it always is. 

" Earthly power doth then show likest God's, 
When mercy seasons justice." 

The Infinite is never so near to man, and so 
dominant in him, as when the heart overflows, 



THE COST OF THE DIVINE SPARK. 19 



sometimes in joy, but necessarily also sometimes 
in sorrow, with sympathy and love. God and 
man are one when they mark the sparrow's rise 
and fall. 

3d. Struggle and suffering come because we 
are capable of spiritual hunger, — hunger, I mean, 
for something besides food for the stomach and 
clothing for the body; hunger for all those 
things which elude bodily grasp, and which hu- 
manity has always believed and hoped and 
trusted will survive the body, — mind-hunger, 
heart-hunger, soul-hunger. To be a thinking 
being means a perpetual struggle after new truth, 
— a perpetual struggle with problems some of 
which refuse to be solved, and with mysteries 
some of which refuse to be cleared away. 
Thought says to man, Work, push out, on, up, 
create. It is the divine within him asserting it- 
self and maintaining its true function. It cir- 
cumnavigates the globe, it penetrates the depths 
of space. Thought, — why, Hamlet speaks for 
all the world and for all human experience when 
he says, " There's nothing either good or bad, 
but thinking makes it so." Thought means am- 
bition, growth, an ideal whose leadership never 
ends, in whose footsteps it is ours to follow. 



20 



THE DEEPER MEANINGS. 



But it costs us something. We feel the pangs 
of hunger when we see human conditions so 
much happier, so much more just and true and 
pure than we are able to actualize, when the 
process of reforming and remaking lags far be- 
hind. It would not trouble us so but for this 
very power we have of dreaming of better things. 
It is this which brings the pang, it is this which 
brings the struggle ; but it is also this which 
brings the attainment, brings the joy. It is just 
so with heart-hunger. A gentleman once said to 
me in the presence of a great grief, " Is it not 
a mistake that we allow ourselves to think so 
much of each other, that we allow ourselves to 
centre so much of affection in a single human 
life, or in two or three human lives, until the 
time comes wnen nothing can happen to such 
a life which does not undo and crush and mar- 
tyrize our own ? " And I could not help think- 
ing how much better it is for any life to be 
undone and crushed and martyrized than to go 
through its earthly career without the blessings 
in some deep and abiding form of love. It 
is natural to the genus man to be hungry for 
love. He wants its light in somebody's eyes, he 
wants its arms about his neck. It makes every 



THE COST OF THE DIVINE SPARK. 21 

moment of sickness an anxious moment, it 
makes every moment of parting one that 
changes the front of the universe for somebody ; 
but sum up all the memories of sanctified 
homes, of self-sacrificing mothers and gentle 
fathers, of affectionate brothers and sisters, of 
manly sons and womanly daughters, of friends 
that come with influences of benediction, of 
neighbors and fellow-citizens who feel somewhat 
of each other's losses and gains, — sum it all up, 
and tell me who would forego it to be rid of the 
struggles and the sufferings which its very depth 
and intensity bring ? The omnipotence of the 
heart ! — it is the divine spark within us which 
no experience can quench, it testifies of its pos- 
sessor that he is " A god, though in the germ." 
Nor is this less true, though not always so easily 
recognizable, of soul-hunger. More and more, 
throughout the ages, as superstition vanishes 
before reason, the man comes to recognize that 
there is something that transcends his human 
grasp, that that something is all about him, in 
the giant mountains and the peaceful valleys, in 
the universe of stars, in the flowers and in the 
trees, in the insects and the birds, in every liv- 
ing thing, in himself. It is this sense of some- 



22 



THE DEEPER MEANINGS. 



thing far more deeply interfused than anything 
he can comprehend which makes man turn with, 
instinctive trust to the unseen world, — the un- 
seen world in himself, in the objects of his love, 
in all men and all things, in time that is and in 
time that is to be. What that is which makes 
the seed grow, what that is which he does not 
lay away in the grave, what that is from which 
all things spring, in which all things live, toward 
which all things tend, — there is a hunger about 
that, there is a reaching out and up, toward that, 
there is a feeding of what we call the soul which 
comes from that. But it is a hunger which has 
never been satisfied, probably never can be sat- 
isfied in this world. It wants demonstration, it 
wants proof such as would stand in a court of 
justice. It would like to be as sure of what God 
is, of what the innermost meaning of life in all 
its forms is, of what birth is and what death is, 
as it is, or thinks it is, of the character of this 
desk and of this building and of all the external 
objects which it can see and handle. That is 
what the soul-hunger of humanity, bravely recog- 
nized, craves. At times it brings doubt and 
despair and agony that the craving cannot be 
met and satisfied. But what comes ? Out of 



THE COST OF THE DIVINE SPARK. 23 

this very fact, that intellectually man is unequal 
to the solution of the problem of problems, 
comes the broader, the deeper, the sublimer 
attitude of trust and faith. It is the divine 
spark in man saying unmistakably, Had I made 
a world so full of beauty, I would have given 
beauty the balance of power : had I made char- 
acters so good and so lovely, I would have given 
goodness and loveliness enshrined in human 
lives the balance of power. It is the divine 
spark, I say, in man, in you and in me, which 
testifies of the impulse in the living flame from 
whence it came, and proposes to hold it to its 
own high standard. There is no majesty in 
humanity equal to that which in pain and dis- 
appointment and sorrow, out of the sense of its 
own integrity, throws itself back upon the integ- 
rity of the universe, and out of the sense of the 
God-like in itself expects the best of that infinite 
power which men call God. In whoso needs 
my help, in whoso can be cheered and strength- 
ened by a word or a deed of mine, 

" See the king, — I would help him. . . . 
Could I wrestle to raise him from sorrow, grow poor to 
enrich, 

To fill up his life, starve my own out, I would. Know- 
ing which, 



24 



THE DEEPER MEANINGS. 



I know that my service is perfect. Oh, speak through 
me now ! 

Would I suffer for him that I love ? So wouldst Thou, — 
so wilt Thou." 

Without such faith in the Eternal Goodness, 
however we may define it, life becomes a 
dark enigma, ending in the blackness of de- 
spair. With such faith, it becomes a moving 
on toward the better, and thence again toward 
the better, in infinite progression. The cost is 
sometimes heavy ; but, oh ! it is a very blessed 
thing that we are not insensible to it, that we 
have deep and tender sympathies which are 
stirred by it, and a spiritual hunger which it can- 
not quench. 

Whether the world could have been so con- 
structed as to have saved us from what seems 
this hard marriage of good and ill, of beauty and 
deformity, of fortune and misfortune, is not now 
the question. It is as it is, and we are placed 
here in it as we are. It is the man's part and 
the woman's part to stand erect, to be courage- 
ous, to keep sweet and hopeful. We may all 
well pray that the fitting epitaph which Brown- 
ing unconsciously wrote for himself, when we 
pass on, may fit us. too, — 



THE COST OF THE DIVINE SPARK. 25 

" One who never turned his back, but marched breast for- 
ward, 

Never doubted clouds would break, 

Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would 
triumph, 

Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, sleep to 
wake." 

Dear friends, are we marching breast forward, 
do we believe in the sunshine behind every 
cloud, have we undoubting faith in the ultimate 
triumph of right over wrong, do we return hope- 
fully to the conquest after every fall, are we sure 
that a happy wakening must follow every sleep ? 
If so, it is not because of these hands, these 
eyes, these feet ; it is not because of our muscu- 
lar systems or our veinous systems or our ner- 
vous systems. It is because of the divine spark 
within us which costs so much, and is worth so 
much; it is because God hath not left himself 
without a witness in any human life. May we 
cherish the spark and fan it, more and more, 
into a living flame ! May we listen to the wit- 
ness, and be strong, reverent, and serene ! 



The Poet-Vision. 



THE POET-VISION. 



In the old story of Greek mythology, King 
lobates commissions a valiant youth, Bellero- 
phon, to slay the terrible monster known as the 
Chimaera. Bellerophon visits the temple of 
Minerva, and is there furnished with a golden 
bridle with which he is to be enabled to capture 
and guide whithersoever he will, in his venturous 
undertaking, the winged horse, Pegasus. All 
depends upon his securing this wonderful and 
beautiful animal upon whose back he can be 
carried speedily over great spaces, and mount at 
slightest need high above the clouds. In Haw- 
thorne's rendering of this myth he makes Bellero- 
phon come to the fountain of Pirene, bridle in 
hand, in search of Pegasus. A country fellow, 
who has driven his cow to drink out of the 
spring, laughs at the youth when he asks him if 
Pegasus still haunts this fountain as he is said 
to have done in days of yore. "Pegasus, in- 
deed ! a winged horse, truly ! Why, friend, are 



3° 



THE DEEPER MEANINGS. 



you in your senses ? Of what use would wings be 
to a horse ? Could he drag the plough as well, 
think you ? How would a man like to see his 
horse flying out of the stable window or whisk- 
ing him up above the clouds, when he only 
wanted to ride to mill ? No, no, I don't believe 
in Pegasus. There never was such a ridiculous 
kind of a horse-fowl made." Presently an aged 
man approaches, leaning heavily on his staff, 
and Bellerophon asks him the same question. 
" Ah ! young stranger, my memory is very poor ! 
When I was a lad, I used to believe there was 
such a horse ; but nowadays I hardly know what 
to think. I doubt if I ever did see him. One 
day, to be sure, I remember seeing some hoof- 
tramps round about the fountain. Pegasus 
might have made those hoof-marks, and so 
might some other horse." Next comes a maiden 
to fill her pitcher. She thought she saw the 
wonderful horse once, high up in the air, but 
it might have been a large white bird. She 
thought she heard him neigh once, a beautiful, 
melodious neigh, but she was startled, and ran 
home without filling her pitcher. Then Bellero- 
phon approaches a little child, who has been gaz- 
ing at him with mouth wide open. "Well, my 



THE POET-VISION. 



3 1 



little fellow, I suppose you have often seen the 
winged horse ?" "That I have. I saw him 
yesterday, and many times before. I often come 
here to sail little boats in the fountain, and to 
gather pretty pebbles out of its basin. And 
sometimes, when I look down into the water, I 
see the image of the winged horse in the picture 
of the sky that is there. I wish he would come 
down and take me on his back, and let me ride 
him up to the moon. But, if I so much as stir to 
look at him, he flies away out of sight." And 
Bellerophon put his faith in the child who had 
seen the image of Pegasus in the water, and in 
the maiden who had heard him neigh so melodi- 
ously, rather than in the middle-aged clown who 
believed only in cart-horses, or in the old man 
who had forgotten the beautiful things of his 
youth. 

The Poet- Vision ! Friends, you and I need it 
still, if we are to find the winged steed which 
shall bear us aloft into that realm of pure and 
inspiring air whence come our inspirations and 
our ideals. The maiden was right, the child was 
right, because they spoke out of the natural in- 
sight and the natural sympathy of the poetic 
heart. In the clear waters of their own fresh, 



3^ 



THE DEEPER MEANINGS. 



buoyant, beautiful lives, heaven's best found easy 
reflection ; and the earnest, enthusiastic seeker 
after truth could hardly help seeing the picture 
there. 

What. is the service to which a greater than 
King Iobates has summoned you and me? 
What is the winged steed upon whose back we 
must ride if we are worthily to discharge that 
service ? What is the fountain of Pirene where 
that steed is to be found and tamed and 
mounted in your life and mine ? These are the 
questions I want to ask, and try to answer now. 

First, what is the life-service to which you and 
I are summoned ? Not, truly, to slay some veri- 
table monster, a compound of lion, goat, and 
dragon, breathing out hideous flames of fire and 
making havoc over vast districts of the habitable 
globe. Not, truly, to deal with supernatural 
powers, or with creatures of the imagination 
peopling the air and rendering the life of man 
an experience of terror. Not this ; but rather 
subduing in ourselves everything which tends to 
mere frivolity, to meanness, to a bald material- 
ism of living, everything which is simply of the 
earth, earthy, and to lift ourselves by nobility of 
thought, of feeling, of aspiration, toward ever 



THE POET-VISION. 



33 



greater heights of truth, goodness, beauty. Is 
there something in your life, dear friends, which 
weighs you down, which burdens your spirit, 
which shuts out the sunlight, which makes ex- 
istence seem dreary, purposeless, a tendency 
toward evil? That is the Chimaera which you 
have to slay. Not simply that you may get him 
out of the way, but that you may give your mind, 
heart, and soul to high and sublime things, to 
things that bring peace and insight and joy. 
That which keeps us under a Reign of Terror, 
that which fences us in, that which tends to nar- 
row our outlook, make the windows of our lives 
small, and cause us to keep the shutters closed, 
— all that is something to be overcome ; and we 
have little conception of the significance of our 
own natures until we recognize this task which 
has been set them to do. It is not one of those 
undertakings which stand out in bold relief, 
challenging the attention of mankind ; it is not 
accompanied with the martial music of battle ; 
it has not about it that kind of glory which at- 
tends the risking of life and the crowning experi- 
ence of martyrdom. But it is no less weighty, no 
less wonderful, no less sublime on this account. 
It is always with us in the routines of the day, in 



34 



THE DEEPER MEANINGS. 



the watches of the night. It begins with the. 
first awakening of conscience : it lasts as long as 
we hear the whisperings of the " Mystic Ought.' 3 
Wonderful, is it not ? appalling and inspiring, 
too. Here am I, a conscious unity, all the 
forces of the universe at work in me, — torrents 
of thought, volcanoes of feeling, gravitation, co- 
hesion, adhesion, the centripetal tendency to 
centre all in self, the centrifugal tendency to 
care for others, and to take in humanity, — here 
am I, a chaos of forces, some pulling up, some 
pulling down, some pressing in, some expanding 
out, the whole conflict between good and evil 
centring at last in me, somewhat of the God-like 
in me, somewhat of that which is not God-like in 
me. And out of it all I am to evolve a cosmos, 
I am to build up a harmony, I am to make a 
well-balanced, sweet-tempered, worthy character. 
I am to do it ; you, friends, every one of you, 
are to do it ; every human being is to do it. 
That is the task to which we are born, and there 
is no other which begins to equal it. Whatso 
Chimaera-like there is to fight is all the more 
difficult of conquest because we carry it within 
us, because it is a part of us. Ceaseless watch- 
ing, eternal vigilance, — this is the order of the 



THE POET-VISION. 



35 



day, and of all days. The field we have to plough 
is our own natures, the pitcher we have to fill is 
our own lives. The great question always, — and, 
alas that we do not oftener learn the necessity 
of pressing it home ! — the great question always 
is, not how much am I getting for an income, 
how much am I building up for a reputation, 
how well am I providing material comforts 
against days of misfortune, but what am I doing 
with myself, am I making the most of myself in 
the thing which it is given me to do, am I ready 
to say at all times, I would like recognition in 
my work, I would like to be well paid in my 
work, but, recognition or no recognition, pay or 
no pay, what I have to do I will do well. What 
we are in ourselves, that we are sure of. 
Honor, inherited or acquired capacity, virtue, 
serenity, philosophy, faith, — these do not rust, 
these are not the prey of moths, these cannot be 
stolen away. Every conquest over self is a con- 
quest over the world. To eliminate from our 
own natures, therefore, all downward tendencies, 
all that narrows and belittles and makes mean, 
to emancipate ourselves from weakness, from 
every form of mental and moral disease and sin, 
and to cultivate within us all that tends toward 



36 



THE DEEPER MEANINGS. 



the true, the beautiful, and the good, — this is 
the life service to which we are called ; a service 
whose glory outshines all other, whose sublimity 
o'ertops all other, whose divinity outreaches all 
other. Most blessed of all human opportunities 
is that of evolving 

" A combination and a form, 
"Where every god shall seem to set his seal, 
To give the world assurance of a man." 

That is an opportunity which you and I enjoy, 
and for the improvement of which we are re- 
sponsible. 

This brings us to our second question, — What 
is the winged steed upon whose back we must 
ride if we are worthily to discharge this service ? 
Plainly not a beautiful snow-white Pegasus with 
silvery wings, inhabiting some distant mountain 
top, and soaring like an eagle through the air ; 
but something more snow-white than that, more 
silvery than that, with a more ethereal flight than 
that. Our winged steed, our Pegasus, is the 
worship of the ideal. Upon our desires for 
something more, upon our longings for the 
better, upon those immortal prayers which are 
our life struggles toward the good and the true, 



THE POET-VISION. 



37 



we rise to the noblest manhood and woman- 
hood, we conquer all the chimaeras which stand 
in our way, we summon into our presence and 
make a part of ourselves the powers which are 
of the gods. How little, at times, we appreciate 
this office of desire, of longing, and of struggle ! 

" Prayer is the soul's sincere desire, 
Uttered or unexpressed 

and there is no other worthy prayer. The 
formal petition of mere lip service has no sanc- 
tity. It is the desire of the innermost heart, the 
deepest longing of the soul, the most persistent 
struggle of the life, which is forever sacred and 
forever gifted with a divine efficacy. And the 
answering of prayer is not necessarily the attain- 
ment of the objective thing toward which desire 
has gone out, which we have longed for and 
struggled for, but rather the reaching of a 
certain subjective condition which has come in 
the close company of noble desire, longing, and 
struggle. It is a coming nearer to God by com- 
muning in the spirit with that which is God-like. 
"O God," said Lessing, "give me the power of 
striving for truth, though I never reach that pure 
light which is thine alone." "'Tis not what 



38 



THE DEEPER MEANINGS. 



man does," says Browning, in varying language, 
o'er and o'er again, — " 'tis not what man does 
that exalts him, but what man would do." Our 
best friends, our wisest guides, our most exalted 
saviors, are our reachings out and up and on, 
from good to better, and from better thence 
again to better, in infinite progression. 

" Longing is God's fresh heavenward will 

With our poor earthward striving : 
We quench it, that we may be still 

Content with merely living ; 
But, would we learn that heart's full scope 

Which we are hourly wronging, 
Our lives must climb from hope to hope, 

And realize our longing. 

" Ah ! let us hope that to our praise 

Good God not only reckons 
The moments when we tread his ways, 

But when the spirit beckons, — 
That some slight good is also wrought 

Beyond self-satisfaction 
When we are simply good in thought, 

Howe'er we fail in action." 

That is the worship of the ideal, the having a 
vision away up and on, toward which we climb, 
carrying with us all the time an ever-improving 



THE POET-VISION. 



39 



actual. No man ever yet passed along that way 
save on the wings of desire, of longing, of 
struggle ; and no man so deeply in the mud as 
to be able to soil the pure white silvery wings 
of desire and longing and struggle. It is only 
when he rejects these, has no faith in them, ex- 
pels them from his life, that he seems hopelessly 
in the mud, and defiles the best things with his 
touch. The career that is discouraging, let the 
world estimate it as it will, is that which is 
thoroughly satisfied with, and settles lazily back 
upon, its achievements. When Thorwaidsen 
had completed in sculpture his great representa- 
tion of Christ which was regarded as perfection 
itself, he was cast down with deepest sorrow, be- 
cause he had achieved his ideal, and so felt that 
he could never do anything good again. Are 
there some of us who have lost our ideal, possi- 
bly by achieving it, possibly without achieving 
it, then we have cause for sorrow, too : we need 
to cultivate it anew, and to bring ourselves to its 
worship every day. We may plough without it, 
we may trade without it, we may earn a living in 
dollars and cents without it ; but we cannot live 
a true manhood and womanhood without it, we 
cannot "rise on the stepping-stones of our dead 



4° 



THE DEEPER MEANINGS. 



selves to higher things " without it, we cannot 
reach heaven here or anywhere else without it. 

" To let the new life in, we know 
Desire must ope the portal. 
Perhaps the longing to be so 
Helps make the soul immortal." 

If there be any virtue in us, any upward look- 
ing, any divine spark, its immortality depends 
upon our preservation of the worship of the 
ideal. 

And now what is the fountain of Pirene where 
our white-winged steed is to be found and tamed 
and mounted ? Not surely as, in the story, one 
beautiful woman melted all away into tears be- 
cause her son had been shot by the arrows of 
the huntress Diana, but rather the stream of 
common human sympathy and experience, fed 
by all humanity's joys and tears. In other 
words, the worship of the ideal grows out of 
what is deepest in human joy and human sorrow. 
It is too serious to be superficial. Surface liv- 
ing, hand-to-mouth living, the cultivation of care 
for the passing moment, regardless of what lies 
beyond, — all this has nothing to do with it. It 
cannot take root on stony soil where there is not 



THE POET-VISION. 



4* 



much earth. It wants the rich and fruitful soil 
of deep experience, — experience which touches 
us in the innermost deeps of being. When two 
hearts are drawn together in true love, worship 
of the ideal pervades the atmosphere ; when a 
little life is worthily summoned "out of the 
everywhere into the here," worship of the ideal 
is born ; when the child grows and waxes strong 
in wisdom with all the grace of the universe 
upon him, worship of the ideal grows and waxes 
strong ; when a dear life sails away again from 
the here into the everywhere, and we follow it 
as long as we can see, and long after we can see, 
worship of the ideal preserves the companion- 
ship, and bears us also to the Silent Land. It is 
real joy and real sorrow which give that warmth 
and mellowness and richness of condition which 
incite the worshipful mood. In the clear, crystal 
depths of our innermost thoughts and feelings 
and aspirations we can always find, if we have 
the Poet- Vision, pictures of the ideal ; we can al- 
ways see the snowy whiteness of its form and 
the silver sheen of its wings. 

But the Poet- Vision is vital. The child and 
the maiden see what man immersed in affairs 
and age which has lost the spirit of youth do not 



42 



THE DEEPER MEANINGS. 



see. The Poet- Vision, which can just sit and 
gaze and dream, which sails its boats of fancy 
and listens to music which others cannot hear, — 
it is that which we need, if we are to keep an 
ideal ever in advance of our actual, and bow in 
worship before it. Joy looks so differently, sor- 
row so differently, all the deepest experiences of 
life so differently, if we only can contemplate 
them with the poet's eyes and the poet's percep- 
tions. There are a great many people who can 
have a good time, or what they call a good time. 
It depends upon confectionery and cake, it de- 
pends upon going to the opera, it depends upon 
some immediate, temporary gratification. It 
comes with the moment : it goes with the mo- 
ment. But joy, real joy, is fixed and habitual. 
It is a mood : it goes to sleep with us at night, 
it awakes with us in the morning. It feeds on 
the lasting satisfactions. It is two souls, like the 
Brownings, living in each other ; it is Cornelia 
finding her jewels in her children ; it is friend- 
ship's bands woven of sympathetic thoughts, 
purposes, feelings. Describing a happy man, 
Theodore Parker says, " With his own smile he 
catches the earliest smile of the morning, plucks 
the first rose of his garden, and goes to work 



THE POET-VISION. 



43 



with the little flower in his hand and a great one 
blossoming out of his heart." What does that 
all mean ? Simply, that he is a poet, and so can 
read the poetry in nature and hear her "primal 
warblings." The rain may spoil the farmer's 
hay : he responds to the music of its patter and 
the glories of the rainbow on the cloud. The 
snow may block the highways of travel, and spoil 
days and weeks of traffic : he sees in every flake 
the wonder of a star, and in every drift the in- 
finite charm of varying form and color. Thus in 
everything he finds an inner significance minis- 
tering to perpetual joy, and he grows into such a 
mood of reverence for external nature and for 
human nature as measurably overcomes all dis- 
aster. He is 

" The man who still suspects and still reveres 
Himself, in nobleness and lowliness 
Of soul, whom no temptations from within 
Force to deformity of life ; whom no 
Seductions from without corrupt and turn 
Astray." 

Thus it is that real joy brings man into the 
immediate presence of the ideal, furnishes him 
with the poetic vision which can always see the 
ideal, and keep him a worshipper at its shrine. 



44 



THE DEEPER MEANINGS. 



It is just so, in quite another way, with real sor- 
row. The disappointments which sometimes 
come are of the moment, they cause a cloud 
which a very little breeze, perhaps as temporary, 
blows away; but there are others which take 
right hold of our deepest instincts and purposes, 
which stand in the path, directly and insur- 
mountably in the path, not only of our whims, 
but of what is very serious business to us, what 
we consider our best life-work. There are mis- 
understandings and betrayals of confidence some- 
times which mean very little and are easily over- 
come ; but there are others which shake us to 
the foundations, and seem to leave us nothing to 
rely upon. When it comes to partings, and we 
have to learn w T hat, so far as this life is con- 
cerned, the word never means, I dare not say 
then that there are any to whom such sorrow is 
of the moment ; but, certainly, for some, if not 
for all, it means a wrenching of life, a crushing 
of hopes, a loneliness of mood such as no words 
can express. Something has gone which was 
infinitely dear and precious, which was perhaps 
the central sun round which our little planetary 
system revolved. Facing the real disappoint- 
ment, the real misunderstanding, the real be- 



THE POET-VISION. 



45 



trayal, the sorrow of the real parting, what is 
left? Nothing in the world that the man of 
mere hard facts can find ; but, oh ! how much 
that the poet can find. Nothing that he who 
only wants to get his plough drawn through the 
field, or he who is only conscious of his pains as 
he hobbles along the road, staff in hand, is 
aware of, but some very melodious notes which 
maiden fancy can hear, and some very beautiful 
reflections which child-faith can see. At the 
fountain of tears, not less than at the fountain 
of smiles, we find that which feeds and nourishes 
the worship of the ideal. Every disappointment 
rightly met points to the ideal. Every miscar- 
riage of confidence and trust points to the ideal. 
Every sainted life tenderly cherished points to 
the ideal. 

When Bellerophon had mounted Pegasus, he 
sailed away through the air, and, after severe 
struggles with the Chimaera, succeeded in dis- 
charging the mission which King lobates had 
given him. Then he returned upon the back of 
the winged steed to the fountain, and embraced 
the gentle child who had so helped him in his 
task. "But in after years," says the story, 
"that child took higher flights upon the aerial 



46 



THE DEEPER MEANINGS. 



steed than ever did Bellerophon, and achieved 
more honorable deeds than his friend's victory- 
over the Chimaera ; for, gentle and tender as he 
was, he grew to be a mighty poet." 

The Poet-Vision, dear friends, — may it be your 
redeemer and mine ! 



Looking at Life through 
New Eyes. 



LOOKING AT LIFE THROUGH NEW 
EYES; 

or, Evolution in its Relation to 
Human Thought.* 



I approach reverently, friends, the great 
theme which your studies suggest, and toward 
which my thought easily flows. If there be 
such a thing possible as a narrow and sectarian 
contemplation of it, I want to avoid that, and 
take with you the larger, more vital human view, 
which may be common to us all. Victor Hugo 
said, " Waterloo is not a battle : it is the 
change of front of the universe." I think the 
doctrine of Evolution, not too technically con- 
sidered, but regarded in its philosophical bear- 
ings, throws a new light upon all of life, and puts 
a new spirit into all of life. It introduces us to 
the universe, opens to us what had been other- 



* Address before Biological Society of Smith College, Spring of 1894. 



5° 



THE DEEPER MEANINGS. 



wise its sealed books, hints to us of the internal 
and eternal meanings, reveals to us the harmo- 
nies and the unities. In so doing, it strengthens 
the cause of pure and undefiled religion by har- 
nessing reason to its service. It sings with 
Tennyson : — 

" Let knowledge grow from more to more, 
But more of reverence in us dwell ; 
That mind and soul, according well, 

May make one music as before, 

But vaster." 

What, now, is the significance, what the essen- 
tial nature, of the Evolution thought ? Plainly, 
natural development everywhere ; orderly pro- 
cession of events everywhere ; equality of cause 
and effect everywhere; continuity everywhere. 
Under its sway a new act without necessary re- 
lation to what went before is impossible; spe- 
cial, isolated creations are impossible. Whatever 
may be our differences of theory concerning 
origins, one thing is clear, Evolution as method 
means the omnipotence of order, the universal- 
ity of law. Man and sparrow alike rise and fall 
by law ; star and flower alike shine and blossom 
by law; physical, mental, moral, and spiritual 
worlds are all ensphered and permeated by law. 



LOOKING AT LIFE THROUGH NEW EYES. 5 1 

As has been said, "In this universe all is gov- 
erned by law, by the regular and orderly action 
of the forces thereof.'' There are no freaks, no 
accidents, no exceptions. It is the majesty of 
order which pervades all things and presides 
over all men. 

Nor are this law and order such as relate to 
mechanics merely, the running of a machine : 
they are such as effect the growth and multipli- 
cation of functions, the unfolding of life forces. 
Nothing springs full-orbed into being : we can- 
not put our fingers upon a definite beginning 
and a definite ending. It is "out of the 
shadows of night," it is a "rolling into the 
light," the end never seen, only the process 
which moves and expands from step to step, and 
step by step, in slow, beautiful and infinite pro- 
gression. And from it all comes not a patch- 
work universe, not a disjointed, antagonistic 
universe, but a consistent, growing cosmos, har- 
monious and rhythmic in all its parts, wherein 

" Every atom poises for itself, 
And for the whole." 

This slow, orderly, continuous progress, radi- 
ating from within outward, with no breaks ; 



5 2 



THE DEEPER MEANINGS. 



which can be studied and understood and de- 
pended upon ; which does not deal with the 
universe in fractions, but treats it as one consist- 
ent and persistent whole, — we may characterize 
as the central and essential thought of Evolution. 

It is a comparatively new and modern 
thought, discerned more or less clearly by the 
poetic mind, notably by Emerson, as a dream ; 
revealed as a working philosophy by the scien- 
tific minds of this century, under the leadership 
of Darwin and Spencer. There is no realm of 
thinking which it has not entered ; there is no 
domain of human interest w T here it has not modi- 
fied, and perhaps revolutionized, theory and prac- 
tice. 

Take first our attitude toward the external 
world. The time was, you know, when outward 
nature meant no more to man than a newspaper 
or printed book would mean to one who never 
heard of type. It was passive, speechless, cold : 
the stone was only a stone to the beholder ; the 
star, only a star ; 

"The primrose by a rivers brim, 
A yellow primrose was to him, 
And it was nothing more." 



LOOKING AT LIFE THROUGH NEW EYES. 53 

But now how changed the view! As I climb 
the mountain side, my foot strikes a piece of 
rock. I pick it up, look at it, think about it, 
classify it. I ask myself, for example, What are 
its constituent parts ? I find it contains quartz, 
feldspar, and mica. I say to myself, Then it 
must be granite. Or I find it made up of small 
particles of sand, and conclude it must be sand- 
stone. Nor does my inquiry end here. Was 
the granite a special creation, completed in a 
moment ? Was the sandstone a special creation, 
completed in a moment ? To make the one, the 
mighty fires of the universe have been necessary. 
The three elements have been run together and 
fused in the molten state. To make the other, 
mighty rocks have been crumbled, the particles 
rounded and polished by streams of water, and 
then assorted and cemented in Nature's labora- 
tory in the form at last so comely and so fair. 
The facts of crystallography are like fairy tales 
when we first encounter them. I have at home 
a little Norway quartz crystal, in the form of a 
hexagonal prism, tapering at both ends to a 
hexagonal pyramid. Nature never made that, I 
have had people say to me : it is unquestionably 
the work of man. Not such the verdict of the 



54 



THE DEEPER MEANINGS. 



trained scientific mind, which has learned to see 
organic unity, order, law, expressed in the beau- 
tiful forms, in which iron pyrites and garnets 
and calcite and all the infinite variety of fasci- 
nating and precious stones are found. Study 
Froebel's thought of the development of all crys- 
tal forms from the cube, with a constant ten- 
dency towards the sphere, which he calls the 
ideal form ; study the more recent classification 
into six general groups, all evolving from simple 
and fundamental to more complex shapes, — and 
you will find " sermons in stones " of which you 
have never dreamed. 

Why is it that to-day we see so much more in 
the flowers than our grandfathers did ? 

" Flower in the crannied wall, 
I pluck you out of the crannies, — 
Hold you here, root and all, in my hand, 
Little flower; but, if I could understand 
What you are, root and all, and all in all, 
I should know what God and man is ! " 

Such the tremendous significance we have 
learned to attach to even the humblest and once 
most despised forms of plant-life. The buds, the 
leaves, the blossoms, talk to us now as they did 



LOOKING AT LIFE THROUGH NEW EYES. 55 

not talk in the olden time. The roots, stem, and 
even the minutest cells talk to us now as they did 
not talk in the olden time. And when we think 
of the little embryo asleep in its hard, lifeless- 
looking, little cradle, only waiting Nature's call to 
wake up, stretch its arms and legs, and grow, we 
bow in worship before the Eternal Mystery in the 
seed, as they were not wont to do in the olden 
time. Given a particular seed, we know what, 
under the proper conditions, will come of it, be- 
cause its life is governed by law. The delicate 
tracery of twigs, at which in winter time my 
waking eyes gaze against a background of 
changing and prophetic coloring from the morn- 
ing sun, — these speak to me of order, beauty, 
law. Every smallest particle in trunk and foli- 
age has marched to its place in the grand result 
to the rhythmic music of law. No accidents in 
form, no accidents in color, no accidents in the 
threads of relation which bind in close and fruit- 
ful company all the members of the vegetable 
world. We shall soon be roaming the fields and 
the woods, we shall soon be climbing the hills 
and walking by the river's banks, we shall soon 
be greeting with smiles the arbutus, and receiv- 
ing its cheery greeting in return ; and it will be 



THE DEEPER MEANINGS. 



with keener delights, with warmer hearts, with 
more reverent spirits, because of what Science 
has done for us and Evolution has done for us, 
as interpreters and prophets of the natural 
world. 

Why is it that we see to-day so much more 
in the grasshopper than our grandfathers did? 
Why do the lobster and the crab, the oyster and 
the clam, seem so much nearer to us than to 
them, so much more worthy acquaintance to us 
than to them ? Why, the fine instinct that will 
not needlessly crush the humblest forms of ex- 
istence was never so strong as to-day, because 
we know now that there is not an insect that 
darts through the air, not a spider that crawls 
along the ground, not a fish navigating the sea, 
not even a worm meeting us in our morning 
walk, but furnishes a new chapter in the never- 
ending history of Wonderland. Our faces light 
up with smiles, our hearts warm with love, as we 
study the movements of squirrels and listen to 
the notes of the first bluebird in the spring. We 
even begin to feel a certain kinship with the 
higher orders, as a result of fuller knowledge of 
their structures and habits. The charm of a 
really good thing or a really worthy personality 



LOOKING AT LIFE THROUGH NEW EYES. 57 

always increases with intimacy. In former times 
man did not know the qualities and tendencies 
in the animal creation ; but now Evolution has 
invited him out to a feast of reason, always in 
session, and bade him make himself at home. 
" Ask now the beasts, and they will teach thee ; 
and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee ; 
and the fishes of the sea, and they shall declare 
unto thee," — how much more that means in 
human thought since the Evolution Philosophy 
has come ! 

The mineral, the vegetable, the animal king- 
doms, — how beautiful, how orderly, how filled 
and permeated of organic unity, each appears in 
itself, as we look at them through new eyes ! 
But that is not all. Each stands no longer in 
isolation, a separate creation : they are all con- 
nected in the most intimate and inseparable re- 
lations, they are all parts of one great creation. 
The same good laws pervade and govern in 
them all. The Eternal Thought is in them all ; 
the Eternal Mystery is in them all. How sug- 
gestive the similar results of the action of similar 
forces, or of the one great force, in different 
realms, as, for example, in currents of air and 
currents of water ! In the formation of snow- 



58 



THE DEEPER MEANINGS. 



crystals, the blossoming of plants, and the evolu- 
tion of planets. 

" One throb from star to flower seems pulsing through 
The night ; one living spirit blending all 
In beauty and in mystery ever new ; 
One harmony divine through great and small." 

This is what we are hearing in these days alike 
from the flowers which star the sod and from 
the stars which are the flowers of the sky. 

Turning now from external nature to human 
nature, we shall find that Evolution has given us 
such an introduction to humanity as we had 
never received before. Man as man is more 
precious, more dignified, more sublime to-day, 
because, through its eyes, we see him in his uni- 
versal relations and his universal tendencies. 
"What a piece of work is a man!" If that 
could be said when he was regarded as an iso- 
lated creature, tending to make war upon other 
men, emphasizing his differences with other men, 
what shall be said now, when he stands a vital 
factor in a complex web of connections whose 
beginnings, boundaries, and end no eye can see, 
no thought conceive? Out of an impenetrable 
past he has come, in a boundless present he 



LOOKING AT LIFE THROUGH NEW EYES. 59 

lives, towards an infinite future he goes. The 
look back is so much longer now than it was to 
our grandfathers, and freighted with so much 
deeper meaning ; the look off and around is so 
much more comprehensive and significant; the 
look on has so much more of depth and height, 
of dignity and sublimity. All this is seen in our 
changed attitude towards human history, which, 
in the large, is the record of man's past ; in our 
changed attitude towards human society, involv- 
ing the discharge of duty in man's present; in 
our changed attitude towards human nature it- 
self, in which is involved the hope of man's fut- 
ure. 

Every tendency toward critical scholarship, 
every new impulse toward knowledge, has been 
a tendency, an impulse, toward a final recogni- 
tion of the solidarity, the unity, of human history. 
All the thought of man, the feeling of man, the 
doing of man, the aspiration of man, has gone 
into the record. The field of investigation is 
coextensive not with a race, but with the race. 
Persian, Chinese, Hindu, Greek, Roman, Jew, 
Arab, — not a people anywhere but have been 
partakers of the light, children of many common 
experiences, benefactors in many ways to you 



6o 



THE DEEPER MEANINGS. 



and to me. It was a long time ago that a very- 
great and wise man said, God hath made of one 
blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the 
face of the earth, and added, He is not far from 
every one of us. It was only last year, in the 
sunlight of the Evolution thought, that the differ- 
ent religious sects and systems of the world were 
lifted to a mount of vision at the White City, 
where they could see this dream of Paul's com- 
ing true. The old idea of a monopoly of truth, 
a corner in truth, once so prevalent, is no longer 
tenable. Truth is, as Emerson says, the summit 
of being : to seek truth is the function of the 
human mind. All worthy literature is the record 
of the struggle of the mind after truth. Hence 
all worthy literature is sacred, to be studied rev- 
erently, its statements submitted to the human 
reason reverently, and to be judged by the 
reason reverently. I wish I could do justice 
to this thought. Here is a little company of 
people consecrating time and energy to the 
study of some great realm of human knowledge. 
Infinite wisdom has breathed into them the 
breath of life, given them the power to think 
and to dream and to sympathize. They are ex- 
ercising their God-given faculties for high and 



LOOKING AT LIFE THROUGH NEW EYES. 6l 

noble ends. Well, that is the most sacred thing 
in this world. Other people all round the globe 
in all times have been, to the best of their abil- 
ity, going through similar processes in a similar 
spirit. And that is the most sacred thing in all 
the world, too. When we grow wise to trace 
love's faint beginnings in mankind, 

" To know even hate is but a mask of love's, 
To see a good in evil, and a hope 
In ill-success," 

then we see how human desire, human struggle 
after the true, the beautiful, the good, is one, 
and therefore that human history is one. 

Out of the increasing sense of the continuity 
of human history grows a sense of the relation 
of cause and effect in human society. Once it 
was easy for some to assume a monopoly of 
virtue, and to point at the evil-doer, saying dog- 
matically and arrogantly, Thou art the man. 
Not such the view we take now of the great in- 
dividual and collective problems of societal life. 
The law of heredity has materially modified the 
severity of the old-time verdicts against the in- 
dividual. The recognition of the complexity of 
social connections has materially modified the 



62 



THE DEEPER MEANINGS. 



old-time verdicts against systems. We know 
now that the good man has received somewhat 
of his goodness, and the bad man somewhat of 
his evil, from his ancestry previous to birth, and 
from the circumstances which have surrounded 
him, favorably or unfavorably, since birth. In 
other words, each is in no small degree the creat- 
ure of his environment. This truth, once real- 
ized, gives mankind a certain consideration and 
fellow-feeling for each other, such as before its 
acceptance were unknown. Anything like hatred 
cf the wrong-doer, as if he were the spirit of 
all evil embodied in human form, is seen to be 
entirely unjustifiable now; and, when man dis- 
covers that the bad are not so hopelessly bad as 
he had thought them, it dawns upon him that 
the good may not be so entirely good as he had 
thought them, — that, indeed, there is no possibil- 
ity of drawing a distinct line between the two ; 
that, from worst to best, it is a gradual shading, 
like the colors in the solar spectrum or the 
tints in the sunset sky. How intensely human 
this view is ! and how absolutely true to the 
facts it is ! It does not extinguish moral respon- 
sibility ; but it makes us all very slow to measure, 
with our finite visions, the degree of moral re- 



LOOKING AT LIFE THROUGH NEW EYES. 63 

sponsibility. On the one hand, it makes Phari- 
saism scientifically obnoxious ; and, on the other 
hand, it works scientifically the amelioration of 
the whole penal code. 

And it is just so with the social system under 
which at any time we find ourselves living. We 
did not create it : we cannot find the men who 
did create it. Its roots are in the past. It has 
grown out of the conditions of the past. It is 
interwoven with all the conditions of the present. 
Take, for example, the labor question. No im- 
partial student can fail to see that the condition 
of the laboring classes is essentially feudal in its 
nature; that the burdens of life bear harshly 
upon them ; that the democratic principle which 
we have adopted in theory, and are measurably 
realizing in practice politically, still remains to 
be applied industrially. Once, that statement, 
if accepted as true, would have led all reformers, 
as it does lead a few not familiar with the Evo- 
lution Philosophy now, to hold the capitalistic 
class immediately responsible for existing indus- 
trial ills. But the larger view sees that capitalist 
and laborer are alike fruits of the system, and 
that, beyond the duty which rests upon every 
man to do what in him lies toward bringing 



6 4 



THE DEEPER MEANINGS. 



about a better order, the individual capitalist is 
as much a victim of the system as the individual 
workingman is. Again, this does not annihilate 
all personal responsibility ; but it modifies very 
much judgment of individuals, and it points us 
to principles rather than men as the things 
which need careful study and change. The 
evils in the social system at any time have roots 
in the soil of industrial life which go far deeper 
than individual fortunes. We find that out 
scientifically, when we go behind the effect to 
study the cause. 

Well, by the time we have grasped the law of 
unity in history and the law of unity in societal 
life, we find ourselves inquiring what this law 
means concerning man's nature and its future; 
and the answer points us, as I think, unmistak- 
ably to the essential worth of human nature. 
Just as the revelation of the action of law in the 
rock and the crystal, in the tree and the flower, 
in the lobster and the grasshopper, gives us a 
higher regard for each of these orders, so ac- 
quaintance with the action of law in human his- 
tory and human society, from the point of view 
of Evolution, leads us to a higher regard for 
human nature itself. Its essential quality seems 



LOOKING AT LIFE THROUGH NEW EYES. 65 

more valuable, more fit to survive, as we contem- 
plate the causes which have gone into it, and 
are constantly working to make it better. Our 
own individual lives, not the victims of accident ; 
our collective life, not the victim of accident, 
but outcome of moral order in a cosmic universe. 
The whole tendency of the best scientific thought 
to-day is to turn us from the immediate and com- 
paratively superficial fact of personified evil to 
the great undercurrent of human growth towards 
the light and the truth. It is this larger view, 
recognizing the unities, which is always the hope- 
ful view. We cannot see the future ; but we can 
safely say if the process continues from good to 
better, and from better to better thence again in 
infinite progression, we cannot hope too much 
for the time to come, both in the world of sense 
and in the unseen and the Silent Land. The 
more we look, the more we study, the more shall 
we be impressed with the mighty significance of 
this thought of organic unity which Evolution has 
given us as applied to the past, the present, and 
the future of humanity itself. You remember at 
the close of the " Comedy of Errors " the two 
Dromios are discussing which shall take prece- 
dence in entering the master's house. Dromio 



66 



THE DEEPER MEANINGS. 



of Syracuse says, " Not I, sir : you are my elder." 
"That's a question," replies Dromio of Ephe- 
sus : " how shall we try it ? M " We'll draw cuts 
for the senior/' adds Dromio of Syracuse: "till 
then, lead thou first." "Nay, then, thus," sug- 
gests Dromio of Ephesus, — 

" We came into the world like brother and brother ; 
And now let's go hand in hand, not one before another." 

I think the Evolution Philosophy furnishes us a 
scientific, just as the great religions of the world 
have furnished us a moral and spiritual, basis for 
human brotherhood. 

Finally, Evolution, as I apprehend it, has 
changed, enlarged, made intelligent, man's atti- 
tude towards God. Going back under the lead- 
ership of Science, we find ourselves constantly 
brought face to face with the unknown. You 
see and realize that every day as you meet the 
wonderful phenomena of life. The more clearly 
our investigations demonstrate the presence of 
law, the adaptation of means to ends, the more 
clearly they demonstrate the necessity for intelli- 
gence in creative power. The more clearly they 
reveal the thread of universal relation leading at 
last and best to human loves, the more clearly 



LOOKING AT LIFE THROUGH NEW EYES. 67 

they reveal the necessity for love in the creative 
power. 

This wonderful cosmos, — planets spinning 
through space with incredible velocity, and yet 
arriving at given points in their inconceivable 
orbits on time which man figures to a nicety ; 
tides coming and going with marvellous volume 
and force, sufficient to sweep everything before 
them, and yet held within understandable boun- 
daries, and turned about in their own tracks 
before the threatened mischief is done; earth, 
atmosphere, space, full of powers capable of 
causing the wreck of matter, and yet so held in 
control that all work together to upbuild the 
world, — this wonderful cosmos shows, never so 
much as in the light of the philosophy of Evolu- 
tion, what in man we should call premeditation, 
what in man we should call grasp of law and the 
manifestation of the highest intelligence. It is 
a vision of the Infinite so wondrous that the 
human mind dares not now picture it in human 
form as it once did. It can only bow reverently 
before it, as a little child. 

By a similar process of reasoning we reach, as 
it seems to me, the most conclusive proof of 
Eternal Goodness. Man now is taught to look 



68 



THE DEEPER MEANINGS. 



within himself, within humanity, to find the evi- 
dence of Creative Love. He thinks of the object 
of his own love, of some one in whom he cen- 
tres his' intensest affection ; and he realizes, just 
in proportion as that affection is true and pure 
and intense, that he would do anything, undergo 
anything, sacrifice anything, to promote the hap- 
piness and welfare of the beloved. He asks 
himself, What does my care and tenderness for 
my child indicate, if not infinite care and tender- 
ness somewhere ? What does my insatiable de- 
sire to surround with my love those who are near 
and dear to me indicate, if not an infinite sur- 
rounding of love for all humanity? And so 
Truth comes to him as a prophet telling of 
truth everywhere; Beauty comes to him as a 
prophet telling of beauty everywhere ; Goodness 
and Love come to him as prophets telling of 
goodness and love everywhere. This is what 
Evolution has brought us, the dream with Sci- 
ence behind it, with the internal evidence of 
human experience and human reason behind it, 
of a universe which, in its minutest part and its 
sublime sum total, is the expression of Infinite 
Intelligence and Infinite Love. We have re- 
ceived from it the larger thought of God ; or, if 



LOOKING AT LIFE THROUGH NEW EYES. 69 

that is too strong a statement, let me say we 
have received from it a scientific basis of cer- 
tainty for the larger thought of God. 

It is no longer " a man in the next street ? ' ; it 
is no longer a being to be definitely pictured 
within the necessary limits of human powers of 
definition, but 

" A sense sublime 
Of something far more deeply interfused, 
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
And the round ocean, and the living air, 
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man: 
A motion and a spirit that impels 
All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
And rolls through all things. " 

We listen to these lines of Wordsworth's with 
new wonder and new satisfaction in the light 
shed upon them by the Evolution Philosophy. 

Such seems to me, friends, just a hint of the 
effect the Evolution Philosophy has had, and is 
having, upon human thought concerning the ex- 
ternal world, the world of humanity, and the 
Infinite Father and Mother in whom all men 
and all things live and move and have their 
being. It throws a new sanctity over all of life. 
It leads us to look at life in all its manifesta- 



7 o 



TFE DEEPER MEANINGS. 



tions through new eyes. It comes not to de- 
stroy, but to build up and fulfil. When you dis- 
sect your little vegetable or animal specimen, you 
are studying sacred scripture. When by and by 
with w T armer days we go to the woods, it will 
be to study sacred scripture. Let us not forget, 
then, 

" That every bird that sings, 
And every flower that stars the elastic sod, 
And every thought the happy summer brings 
To the pure spirit, is a word of God." 

And above all, in all our studies and all our 
relations, in our reading of the past, our work in 
the present, our dreams for the future, let us 
bear, as a charmed rod to roll back the waves of 
doubt and despondency and fear, the thought of 
organic unity and orderly progression. So shall 
we discover the deeper meanings ; so shall we 
hear the diviner harmonies ; so shall we see, 
with reverent and thankful hearts, that 

u Out of the shadows of night 
The world rolls into light, 
It is daybreak everywhere." 



Rejoice: We Conquer! 



REJOICE: WE CONQUER! 



In the year 490 b.c. the battle of the Persians 
against the Greeks on the plains of Marathon 
was fought. According to some of the histories, 
in which fact is more or less intertwined with 
legend, when Athens heard of the invading army 
she sent one Pheidippides, a trained runner, to 
Sparta, some one hundred and forty miles dis- 
tant, to demand help against the common foe. 
For reasons satisfactory to themselves the Spar- 
tans declined, at least for the time being, to 
render assistance, whereat Pheidippides set out 
on his return, but by the way fell in with the 
god Pan, who promised to fight with the Greeks, 
and did so, insuring them success. Then the 
messenger, who had returned and was present at 
the battle, ran again to Athens to announce the 
victory, and from the great strain fell dead 
with the words, " Rejoice : we conquer ! " on his 
lips. Out of this story, as I have said, part fact, 
part legend, Browning has evolved his poem of 



74 



THE DEEPER MEANINGS. 



" Pheidippides." He makes the hero give his 
own account of his hard journey to Sparta. 

" Your command I obeyed, 
Ran and raced. Like stubble, some field which a fire runs 
through, 

Was the space between city and city. Two days, two 

nights did I burn 
Over the hills, under the dales, down pits, and up peaks." 

In conformity with the story the poet de- 
scribes how, out of breath, Pheidippides deliv- 
ers his message, is unsuccessful, starts back on 
the run, and is suddenly brought face to face 
with " majestical Pan." He makes Pan pledge 
himself to the cause of the Athenians, just as 
the story does ; and for their brave herald he 
adds the promise of a worthy reward. Then 
the god disappears. " But enough ! " says our 
hero, 

" He was gone. If I ran hitherto, 
Be sure that the rest of my journey I ran no longer, but 
flew." 

So flying, he comes in upon his countrymen, tells 
them how Pan will fight with them, and how he 
is his friend, too, and, when Athens is saved, 
w r ill make it possible for him to marry a certain 



REJOICE : WE CONQUER ! 



75 



maid, hie to his house and home, and, when his 
children shall creep close to his knees, recount 
the kindness of the god. 

But it was not so to be. He fights at Mara- 
thon, when success comes runs with the mes- 
sage, " Rejoice : we conquer ! " and dies as he 
delivers it. 

" So, to this day, when friend meets friend, the word of 
salute 

Is still Rejoice!' — his word which brought rejoicing 
indeed. 

So is Pheidippides happy forever, — the noble, strong 
man 

Who could race like a god, bear the face of a god, 

whom a god loved so well. 
He saw the land saved he had helped to save, and was 

suffered to tell 
Such tidings, yet never decline, but, gloriously as he 

began, 

So to end gloriously, — once to shout, thereafter be 
mute : 

' Athens is saved ! ' — Pheidippides dies in the shout 
for his meed." 

" Rejoice : we conquer ! " Happy they in all 
time and under all conditions who, not in weari- 
ness and doubt and despair, but as they run, in 
the discharge of every-day duties and in pursuit 



76 



THE DEEPER MEANINGS. 



of high and exalting though perchance never 
fully realized aims, catch and retain this heroic 
spirit. Happy they who, out of personal strug- 
gle and longing and uplifting, can " tell such 
tidings, yet never decline, but, gloriously as they 
begin, so to end gloriously." This is indeed 
the highest favor of the gods to the wearied, 
strained, but never destroyed human soul. 
" Athens is saved!" " Pheidippides dies in the 
shout for his meed." 

What is life ? What is true conquest ? What 
is worthy rejoicing ? 

What is life ? I mean not now scientifically or 
philosophically considered, but as a matter of 
practical, every-day exigency. What is life as 
you and I met it yesterday, as we are meeting it 
to-day, as we shall meet it to-morrow, — meet it 
in our homes, in our schools, in our workshops 
and counting-rooms, in our offices, and on the 
street ; yes, what is life in ourselves ? A some- 
thing in which lights and shadows, comfort and 
hardship, joy and sorrow, intermingle ; a some- 
thing which means more or less of ease, but also 
in the long run more or less of struggle. W T e do 
not understand it. The human mind, to be hon- 
est with itself, must say it never has understood 



REJOICE : WE CONQUER ! 77 



it. Man only knows he is here, before him a task 
to be attempted, persistently continued, never 
fully done. Opportunity comes, and Duty says, 
Do this or do not do that. He hears the voice, 
finds happiness in obeying it and unhappiness 
in neglecting its summons. It is always, Run, 
Pheidippides, run : move toward truth, beauty, 
love ; move up and on toward some mighty and 
winsome ideal. He may dream and speculate, 
he may divide humanity into sects and parties ; 
but hard, inevitable fact confronts him, he must 
do the work which lies next him, he must take 
the next step as best he can. 

" Vainly I strive through the darkness to see 
The path I must travel, 'tis hidden from me ; 
Halting, despairingly, kneeling, I say, 
Father, I cannot go : there is no way. 

" Lo ! as I kneel, at his feet humbly bowed, 

My pathway is shown through a break in the cloud, — 
No road stretching far, the horizon to meet, 
Only one step, lying close at my feet." 

And all the weight of the universe presses upon 
us until we take that one step. You are not 
responsible, good friend, I am not responsible, 
for ultimate results. We are not the custo- 



73 



THE DEEPER MEANINGS. 



dians of to-morrow. We are responsible for, we 
are the custodians of the now. And the most 
we can do with this present moment is what ? 
Simply to give it the right tendency, an upward 
inclination, a movement toward the ideal. 
Achieve ! achieve / achieve ! the genius of life 
strikes no other chord ; and we improve our 
fleeting opportunities, as they are borne to us 
and from us on the wings of the hours, by trying 
to achieve. The baby in its mother's arms feels 
itself, puts out its hands, discovers its joints, its 
physical capacities in all directions, and grows 
by exercising them. By and by its little mind 
acts consciously and to increasing purpose, its 
little heart manifests itself in increasing beauty, 
and thought and love come and bless its growth, 
and crown it king. It is only one step at a time, 
and that an effort. It is not getting there, it is 
keeping on, which seems the law of its being. 
Why it should be so we do not know : we only 
know it is so. Well, our own experiences are only 
the baby's written large. Through struggle we 
attain, little by little, just as he does, and with no 
greater knowledge or control of ultimate happen- 
ings than he has. What the baby regards failure 
and what we regard failure may be among those 



REJOICE : WE CONQUER ! 



79 



" stepping-stones of our dead selves upon which 
we rise to higher things." The Spartans do not 
come to us when we want them ; but sometimes, 
perhaps always, if we only had the power of per- 
ceiving it, the gods come to us in our disappoint- 
ments, and serve us better than the Spartans 
could have done, The rewards do not always 
come as we plan they shall, but perhaps we are 
really forever more fortunate in the meed which 
is ours. We must never deceive ourselves with 
the thought that our view can possibly have that 
breadth and comprehensiveness which insures 
infallibility of judgment. The experiences which 
come to us have meanings far beyond our ken. 
"Of old time," said Theodore Parker, "Michel 
Angelo took his copies from the persons in the 
streets, and wrought them out on the walls and 
ceiling of the Vatican, changing a beggar into a 
giant, and an ordinary woman who bore a basket 
of flowers on her arm into an angel ; and the 
beggar and flower-girl stand there now in their 
lustrous beauty, speaking to eyes that wander 
from every side of the green world. So, my 
brothers and my sisters, out of the common 
events of life, out of the passions in our hearts, 
we may paint on the walls of our lives the fair- 



8o 



THE DEEPER MEANINGS. 



est figures, angels and prophets.'' Does not the 
record, when it is all made up, testify to the 
truth of the great preacher's words ? We have 
to travel over the stubble of disappointment, of 
personal weakness, and sometimes personal sin, 
over bad inheritances and bad circumstances, 
over sufferings which others bring upon us and 
sufferings which we bring upon ourselves, over 
all the anxieties of life and the inexpressible 
sorrows of death, — we have to travel over them 
all. It does not do to surrender to them. How- 
ever deep the valley, it is down into it and 
through it. However high the summit, it is up 
and over it, — one persistent, brave, endless jour- 
ney toward the stars. 

Such is the practical meaning of life. For the 
moment of superficial pleasure some one may 
say : Away with your everlasting preaching ! Let 
us eat, drink, and be merry. But the parent 
with a little life committed to his keeping feels 
not that way ; the teacher with minds to educate 
and character to mould feels not that way ; 

" Two souls with but a single thought, 
Two hearts that beat as one," 

in any of the deep experiences of life feel not 



rejoice: we conquer! 8i 

that way. Form a lofty ideal, toward which 
mind, heart, and soul may move out and on and 
up in infinite progression. Consecrate thyself in 
ceaseless loyalty to the service of that ideal, and 
then, "Run, Pheidippides, run." 

This is what it means to live a worthy life. 
This is the summons which the very fact of ex- 
istence brings us, which the humblest may hear 
and answer, and to which the mightiest must 
give heed. 

" The hero is not fed on sweets. 
Daily his own heart he eats. 
Chambers of the great are jails, 
And head-winds right for royal sails." 

Let us not think, friends, of such sentiments as 
applicable only to some one afar off. Heroism 
is for you and for me. Our sails may be royal, 
and fill responsive to the head-winds blowing. 

What, now, in such a life as this, is true con- 
quest ? Not, surely, the gathering together of 
material things, the building up of a fortune, the 
acquiring of control over houses and lands, the 
election to office, — these have nothing to do 
with it. The battle is not first and primarily 
with the elements, harnessing them to our ser- 



82 



THE DEEPER MEANINGS. 



vice : it is not with other people, causing them 
to follow our leadership, and obey our will. 
True conquest from beginning to end is self-con- 
quest. It is learning how to bring self ever 
nearer to ideal aims, it is learning how to meet 
all fortune, whether seeming good or ill, in such 
a way as to make life nobler and purer and 
sweeter and more divine. Goethe said he never 
had an affliction which he did not turn into a 
poem. Perhaps the great conquest of life for us 
all is to turn all our experiences, whether of joy 
or of sorrow, into the life poem which it is ours 
to write. You know, friends, what that means 
practically. It means patience, it means perse- 
verance, it means acquiescence to that which is 
inevitable in a sweet spirit, it means exaltation 
of mood, it means doing everything in such a 
w r ay as to make that and the action fine. You 
have been the possessor of a large amount of 
property, you have had dreams of what you 
would do with it for what seemed to you your 
own and others' good, for years all your habits 
of life have been shaped by opportunities and 
adapted to a plane which it has made possible ; 
and now it is all gone. You cannot do what 
you dreamed of doing : you must change even 



REJOICE : WE CONQUER ! 



83 



your customs and daily routines of existence. 
You must put your shoulders to the wheel in a 
way perhaps you have never done before. It is 
one of the hardest things in the world to do ; but 
there is no choice, — you must do it. Can you 
do it bravely, sweetly, serenely, or is it going to 
make you out of sorts with yourself and with the 
world? Can you rise superior to the disaster 
into the calm repose of exalted character, or 
has it crushed and demoralized you ? You have 
staked everything upon getting a certain pub- 
lic position, you have felt that it would add 
strength to your influence ; and you have been 
ambitious to have a large influence, and to use 
it as it has seemed to you good for your fellow- 
men. You have come almost within grasp of 
it, possibly you have attained unto it ; and then 
it has slipped away, depriving you of the very 
thing on which you had learned most to lean. 
What is the effect upon you ? Have you surren- 
dered in spirit because defeated in your worldly 
ambition, or are you looking inward to yourself, 
and discovering those sources of real influence 
and highest honor, which do not depend upon 
votes, but conquer by presence and without 
means ? You are dealing with childhood : you 



8 4 



THE DEEPER MEANINGS. 



thought it was to be a question of moulding in 
clay, a working with plastic, pliable character, 
quickly responsive to every smallest impress of 
your mind and heart ; and you find you have a 
strong will to meet, a character which resists to 
mould, a nature with complex tendencies in all 
directions to guide. It is line upon line and 
precept upon precept : it is the task of long, anx- 
ious, perplexing years. How do you meet it, — 
fretfully, superficially, complainingly, or gently, 
studiously, believingly ? You began life full of 
energy, you enjoyed activity, you wanted to par- 
ticipate with your fellow-mortals in the vital, 
vigorous work of the world ; and sickness has 
laid its hand upon you, you cannot do what you 
once could, you feel intensely your own physical 
limitations, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is 
weak. Does this undermining of your bodily 
health result in irritability and despondency, 
and, perchance, in positive despair, or do you 
rise above the ills of the body in fortitude and 
even exaltation of refined, disciplined character ? 
You have held in life some beautiful and inspir- 
ing relation with another soul, you have centred 
thought, feeling, aspiration, in that soul, and by 
the slow processes of wasting disease, or with 



REJOICE : WE CONQUER ! 



85 



the suddenness of the lightning's flash, death 
has come, and taken away, so far as the external 
eye can see, that soul from you. How do you 
meet this supreme grief? Do you lose confi- 
dence in the integrity of things, do you say to 
yourself it is all a failure, does pessimism take 
possession of your mood, or can you see through 
your tears and through your heartaches the silver 
and the golden threads among the sombre ones ? 
Can you see in precious memories, in immortal 
hopes, in undying faith, beauty rising from 
ashes and roses blossoming from among the 
thorns ? The conquest of life consists, does it 
not, in meeting all these disappointments and 
miscarriages and sorrows in a brave and noble 
way, — not because we understand them, but be- 
cause we must keep true and patient and sweet 
under them, in order to preserve our mental and 
moral and spiritual integrity. 

" Trust life," says Samuel Johnson, "life itself 
as a whole, and whatever its laws bring. Trust 
it, — not because you can understand all it means, 
but because it is your life and your destiny, and 
because you are more than understanding, or ex- 
perience, knowing how to honor your ideal. 
This is to be strong, helpful, and of steadfast 



86 THE DEEPER MEANINGS. 

cheer. God grant us this. No prayer can ask 
for more, no power suffice with less." Make of 
all thy opportunities, of all thy disasters even, 
something beautiful and fair; and in the long 
run Heaven will be on thy side, and the greatest 
of all conquests, that of a man over himself, will 
be thine. 

And now what is true rejoicing ? Whence 
comes true happiness ? Not in seeking joy with 
a definite purpose, not in making it our being's 
end and aim. Not so does felicity and lasting 
satisfaction come. But rather as a result of true 
conquest, conquest over self, in the battle of 
life. I appeal to the deepest thought and feel- 
ing in any human being to know if that is not 
so. So universal is a certain disappointment 
which follows the getting of material things, or, 
perhaps I ought to say, a certain failure to real- 
ize expectations, we incline to pity a man or 
woman who is oblivious to it. We regard such 
a one as exceptionally wanting in the finer 
sensibilities. It is proverbial that the man who 
is seeking a fortune is never satisfied with his 
wealth. He always wants more, and, when he 
gets more, again it fails to content him ; and so 
he pushes on in the same direction, and with the 



REJOICE : WE CONQUER ! 



8 7 



same lack of satisfaction, perhaps as long as life 
lasts. The man who is seeking office has a sim- 
ilar experience. How many times, in his career, 
he bends all his energies, and maybe sacrifices 
some of his virtues, to get public position, and, 
after he gets it, finds that it has a great many 
qualifications which he did not see, and that it 
never brings him the supreme returns for which 
he had hoped and in which he had believed ! I 
doubt not, the highest political office on this 
globe is that of President of the United States, 
the chosen head, for four years, of sixty millions 
of people ; but I hazard nothing in saying that 
the mere holding of the office, with all its honors 
and emoluments, never yet brought all-sufficient 
and all-satisfying happiness to any one. It is so 
in everything, in little affairs and great affairs. 
Objective riches " cloy the hungry edge of appe- 
tite/' but leave the lurking sense of hunger still. 
It is because being, and not possessing, is the 
important thing that this is always so. It is sub- 
jective poverty or riches, it is what we are, that 
makes us discontented and unhappy or fills us 
with the spirit of rejoicing. What we are, — that 
depends upon how we meet the struggles of life, 
upon how we come out of these conquests over 



88 



THE DEEPER MEANINGS. 



ourselves. A real victory for truth, beauty, 
goodness in ourselves, always brings the sun- 
shine. In good repute or bad repute, in what 
the world calls success or what the world calls 
failure, it brings a measureless content. Dear 
friend, if you have a task before you, and keep 
thinking how hard your lot is, how unfairly and 
in what an unfriendly spirit other people have 
acted toward you, how unkind the make-up of 
the universe itself has been, you will never be 
happy. But if you try to meet your duties in a 
patient, sweet, loyal spirit, determined to do the 
best you can, under all the circumstances, then 
you will wake up in the morning and go to bed 
at night with a rejoicing heart. 

So is Pheidippides happy forever ! Not be- 
cause he sits down with the maid he loves, and 
gathers about his knees the children to whom he 
tells of the favor of the god, — not because he 
wins what he most wants to win,— but because to 
the very last he is discharging with all the ardor 
of his being and the consecration of his powers 
the duty w T hich lies next him. It is just so with 
us all. Only one step at a time, but take it, 
take it bravely and serenely ; only one duty at a 
time, but do it faithfully and sublimely, and all 



REJOICE : WE CONQUER ! 



8 9 



will be well. Out of such conquest over self 
comes satisfaction. Through such conquest over 
self, lined with many a beautiful and fragrant 
flower, winds the way to joy. Hast thou known 
a character in private life, young or old, whose 
very presence has been an inspiration and a ben- 
ediction ? Rest assured that, consciously or un- 
consciously, it has walked that road. Hast thou 
known a character in public life which, in its in- 
fluence for the best, has survived the changes 
of time and the fortunes of parties ? Rest as- 
sured it has walked that road. If, when we 
meet each other, there is something in the glance 
of the eye or the touch of the hand or the word 
upon the lips which shall live in gentle memo- 
ries after we are gone, it is because we have 
walked that road. 

"Rejoice: we conquer !" Methinks that is 
the message which comes back to us from every 
soul at peace with itself as it passes over the 
threshold of the unseen world, — every soul 
which has fought a good fight, upon this great 
battle-field of life, in the conquest over self. 
" Rejoice : we conquer ! " May it be the mes- 
sage, dear friend, which shall come to some 
human hearts from your life and mine ! 




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